


Yevgenisis

by Paranormal_Shitness



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Digital Art, Dysphoria, F/M, Fan Art, Forced Feminization, Heathenry, Hitler’s Big Anime Titties, Identity Porn, It’s Rape, Kidnapping, Lactation, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Mentions of mythological cannibalism, Misgendering, Multi, Nazis are mentioned Nazis are killed But Nazis are all virgin cucks, No Nazi Porn in the WWII Era fic, Non-Consensual, Rape, Stockholm Syndrome, WWII Soviet/Finn rape porn, anti Christian propaganda, heavy religious references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-06 06:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12811275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranormal_Shitness/pseuds/Paranormal_Shitness
Summary: They’re six days’ march across the boarder, following the infantry troops deployed a few days ahead of them in order to secure safe passage home and make every Finn on Karelian land regret their decision to remain a Finn.Yevgeny is hoping he won’t be expected to do all the heavy lifting so that he might have some time with the prisoners but that seems increasingly unlikely. So before he’s called away to aid in setting their tents up once more, he pulls Kreisievic aside and points the boy out to him.‘Anyone touches that one and they die.’The reputation he’d nurtured in Poland gets him an eye roll but Yevgeny doesn’t need to adhere to the chain of command or social expectations to be listened to. He knows his words don’t go unheeded anymore





	1. A Logging Town

PART ONE: THE FINCIDENT 

The snow has lightened past the border. From three feet at the beginning of their march to around 5 inches. Their footprints leave in it windows to the frozen grass below.

It is hot. The men have stripped from their outer coats, replaced their wide snow boots for smaller lighter ones. They move breast to breast, two by two. 

This would be fields save the winter. It has been a cold and harsh one back home but here the weather is forgiving. The lake is far from completely frozen. Slushy ice beats against the docks and shore.

Bare trees tell stories of children’s games on the outskirts of a small village. His red gloves hold stark against a rope swing hung from one. Bright color on damp faded weave. 

The village does not know they are here yet. They are ten men. A small unit. The night before they bedded down just over the ridge and now stand hidden in a corpse of winter aspens.

‘Whatever you are thinking of doing to that rope, don’t. When our orders say ambush they mean ambush.’

It’s his Captain speaking. A little man. One he does not care for. Who’s decisions he has yet to respect. 

The leather on his hands squeaks slightly as he tightens his grip. ‘You think one of their runners would be fast enough to reach the militia that left here last week in time?’ He asked.

‘Ambush, Yevgeny. Our orders say Ambush so we Ambush,’ his captain insists.

He looks over his shoulder at the man. Quirks his head, listening to the direction of the wind. Upwind of the houses. The smoke would billow right down into the streets. The dogs and chickens would spook. The cows would shudder in their pens. And before any human knew it they would be storming the village, guns in hand, and fire on their side. 

‘It is still an ambush. We are right on their door step. What good is warning too late?’ He reasons.

‘I sai-‘ his captain starts but the tree is already burning by the time the words are out of his mouth and the flames swallow his words.

‘We take them now,’ Yevgeny shouts over the crackle as it spreads to the next tree and the one beside that. ‘Now, while they are disoriented! Go!’

He gives the captain’s blank face a wink as he follows the others up the hill. 

It’s about ten seconds to the building line, full speed. The others are already shouting as they plow through doors and into houses.

Logging village. Working class citizens. War time. Women, children, the ailing, and the elderly.

This would be fun if it weren’t so easy. The pressed snow over the village main street melts under the red soles of his boots. The few Finn women that line it stop in their panic, feeling the change in the air as it hits his skin. The smell as it sizzles and pops.

Their eyes on him. One woman with a child under her arm. Unprepared. He takes another step, and it eats the ice beneath his feet, spreads out over the ground in a great steaming billow of heat that cooks the water off before it can even rise into steam.

She locks eyes with him. Something in her features mirroring his fire as she grips the boy’s shoulder. If their captain had not been so stringent about following the rules, he gets the feeling she would have been rallying what was left of the town to reign what hell they could.

‘Round them in the street,’ their captain shouts as he trundles up the hill after them. Count them. Make sure no one has left this village. Make sure no word has spread!’

There’s a sound as the air dries further, readying his little stage. The winter makes him slow to start. Even in this relative heat. Even dressed down to his under shirt.

The captain yelps as the soles of his shoes warm uncomfortably, and Volgin is vaguely aware of the man rushing past him into the nearest house. But his attention stays on her.

She’s straightening up to his challenge, pushing the child away. Untying the shawl around her shoulders. She’s reaching for something at her side. A cross bow at her hip. A hip quiver. She means to shoot him. Taking aim, the child behind her, like a mother bear protecting her cub from a hunter who means to wear it as a trophy.

He has every respect for her, as he lowers his center of gravity and rushes, pushing himself forward on his own flames. Her eyes have just enough time to go wide. Her fingers have just enough time to squeeze. The wall of heat lifts it over him as he grapples her.

She shouts something. Sounds as if she’s telling the child to run. Ignoring the uncomfortable pinking of her skin in order to attempt his protection. He’s small. Too young to fight. Looks 10, maybe 13 but he can see in the boy’s face that same intensity as she has. He can see in the boy’s feet that he is rooted to this land. Too young to fight but too old to run.

She’s screaming in his arms, clothing burning away where they touch, and all the boy can do is watch.

He doesn’t know much Finnish. He’s only had a few weeks to study it since their deployment came through. But he knows enough to promise her they won’t harm the boy. Her eyes are distrusting as they turn on him, watching his mouth whisper it to her. Suspicious. 

‘Don’t worry mother bear. I will care for him.’

She lives through it. Burned badly in a band around her chest and arms, in pain, tended to by the older women they had captured. 

He surveys the congregation in the street. Most of the buildings are burning down around them, and the men are only half dressed anymore despite the sun’s decline in the sky.

LT. Kreisievic has been starting with the young and uninjured women. He’s on his third, asking her if anyone has fled. 

Yevgeny has already grown bored and tired of the show and no attempt at bargaining with the captain can convince the man to let him lead the interrogations. Apperently he is fed up with the insubordination. 

The boy sits in chains with the other children, but he keeps an eye on it. Marking it’s place and who approaches. Trying to think of what to do with such a prize.

There should be work soon. The village will have to be strongholded. The prisoners will have to be seen to proper housing. Half the men have already gone back to pick up their tents and other surplus supplies. 

The boy’s face is tear stained which Yevgeny finds odd with his age. He seems too old to be able to cry. Or maybe he’s not as much of a boy as he looks.

‘We have a supply run in a few days,’ he says, leaning into Gorshek’s personal space. 

The man purses his lips and nods. 

‘You handle all of that yes?’

He nods again.

‘I have some medication I need and I need it as soon as possible.’

Gorshek nods a third time.

‘I will give you a list, it will be short, and you will get it to our supplier when he comes to ask what we need,’ he promises.

‘And what’s in this for me?’ Gorshek asks, not pausing to look at Yevgeny directly.

Yevgeny looks the other man up and then down. ‘30 rubles and the continued use of both your very nice legs,’ he explains.

Gorshek goes back to silently nodding. Good that he knows his place.

They’re six days’ march across the boarder, following the infantry troops deployed a few days ahead of them in order to secure safe passage home and make every Finn on Karelian land regret their decision to remain a Finn.

Yevgeny is hoping he won’t be expected to do all the heavy lifting so that he might have some time with the prisoners but that seems increasingly unlikely. So before he’s called away to aid in setting their tents up once more, he pulls Kreisievic aside and points the boy out to him.

‘Anyone touches that one and they die.’

The reputation he’d nurtured in Poland gets him an eye roll but Yevgeny doesn’t need to adhere to the chain of command or social expectations to be listened to. He knows his words don’t go unheeded anymore.

The night comes with drinking, and joking. Three of the men break off to gamble on cards. Four more gather around the fire with flasks in their hands. The last three take turns on watch.

Yevgeny is always kept by the fire. They find it useless for him to be put on watch almost ever. He is loud, brash, and large. Easy to spot or hear, and has a history of engaging a threat by himself rather than calling his comrades for help. 

And that way he keeps the fire from going out. When they feed him drink the flames grow, when they make him laugh the flames soften, and when they make him mad the fire sparks. It keeps them polite and on their toes even with booze warming their bellies and bolstering their nerves. 

The dark has settled in close on the night, wrapped around her arms as a shawl. Snug in on the men as they grow restless in their banter. The flames throw hard light on their sharp faces, and shadows on the prisoners shackled behind them.

Dimitriov is the one who looks at him and asks for a story. One of the old myths. ‘We’re all tired from the travel. We could use a way to let our minds wander right?’

Yevgeny looks at the prisoners behind them and back again. ‘Fine,’ He says.

‘A long time ago, when the earth was still hot, and wisdom was young, there were giants in the mountains of the east and north,’ he started. ‘And amoung the giants was one of particular size and strength know as Lightning who could call the sky-fire of his namesake. And he had wronged the gods. So a young god who’s name had not been spread was sent north east into the giant’s jungle where he hunted Lightning and his family for nine weeks.’

‘Why is it always nine with this?’ Kreisievic asks.

Yevgeny waved a hand at him. ‘For the poetry,’ he explained. ‘First he hunted the youngest brother. A giant named Bee Keeper, holder of sweet secrets, and whisperer of lies, who questioned everything the God knew, and he took his head which he mounted on a stake outside his camp. And when he was hungry in the night he ate of his flesh.’

‘Isn’t cannibalism a little gauche?’ Kreisievic asks, again.

The man is always trying his patience. Between them the fire hisses and spits

‘I am telling an ancient story, one that has been in my family for generations and you ask stupid questions all the time?’ He demands.

The lieutenant at least has the sense of mind to look cowed as he apologizes. Dimitrov laughs and shoves him in the arm.

‘The giant was so large the meat sustained him heartily for a week and he did not need to leave his camp for that time save to carry water from the river. He spent this week training and honing his weapons, building new spears, in preparation for the next hunt.

‘And when the time came that his stores had run empty and his stomach churned he gathered his weapons and his strength and set out once more. 

‘That night he hunted the mother, named Kindeling, silent walker, a stalker of the underbrush who could walk even on dry twigs without making a sound. She fell just as quietly as she moved. He took her head and mounted it on a stake outside his camp.

‘Her body was so large it sustained him heartily for two weeks, and he did not leave his camp in all that time so the third giant knew exactly where to find him, training and honing his weapons. This was the eldest brother Rope Weaver, defyer of death and binder or all things, who’s silver tongue made men as quick to anger as he was himself. 

‘He was enraged to see the bodies of his family members treated in such a fashion, bones lying unburned and unburied for the crows to pick over. And he engaged the young god in a battle of wits. A puzzle. As the god lay sleeping in his bed the giant snuck into the camp and tied his hands to his feet so he could not move. Then he set fire to the remains of his mother, using the dried jerky of her flesh for kindling so the little god would have to find a way to wear through the ropes before the fire could devour him,’ Yevgeny paused for effect and the flames between them crackled ominously, twisting and turning to his words to seem threatening and alive.

‘The young god struggled and struggled but he was not a giant, and he was not strong enough to break the rope. Until now he had only beaten the giants by element of surprise and by outthinking them. He looked at at the fire, consuming his camp, jumping gleefully as it ate its way through his weapons, the bones of its kin, and he saw in the fire a face, and to that face he saw a name, so he called out to it.

‘And the hot fire grew warm, and it’s hard edges softened. It grew in that instance from wild to docile, and laid at his feet a hearth fire.

‘It said to him, “I am the brother of these giants. I am the fire born when sky-fire strikes dry earth. You are a knower of true things, and so you have seen my name, and thereby you bind me, but I shall never truly be yours, and you must watch me at all times lest I burn you. For I am a savage thing and even if I grow to love you I will hate you with all my heart until you draw your last breath beneath the cage of your chest.”

‘But the god said “I am a son of Borr, and I’ve come from the south to hunt an evil giant that threatens my people. I fight for what is right and just and as I have named you you shall aid me”

‘And so the fire gnawed through his restraints, and burned him only gently, then turned on its own brother and chased him from the forest.’

Volgin pauses in the story to watch the faces of the men. Kreisievic is slightly confused by the twists and turns of the myth, but the other two seem to follow him.

Behind them the boy watches, eyes wide and ears wider, trying to puzzle out his words.

‘For many days and many nights the small god wandered the wilderness of the Giant’s forest, sheltered only by the broad leaves above him, and the thickets in which he slept. Fire kept him warm in the night and cooked is food faster than the sun did. He fell from the nobility of eating strong game to catching mice, and lizards along the river banks where he traveled. Time stopped passing in a way that could be made sense of.

‘After many days and many nights with no supplies, and no idea where he was, the little god grew exhausted and laid himself down to rest. 

‘The fire was ever hungrier than him and needed to be fed ten time as much, eating whatever was around them. The longer he failed to pay it heed the more the fire would grow and the more it grew the more creatures could smell its heat, and see its smoke.

‘The little god lay there for a long time with visions of his home and his ancestors behind the lids of his eyes and when it finally grew too hot to keep them shut he opened them to see a great sea serpent had beached itself beside him and was licking it’s massive toothy jaws.

‘He saw the serpent before it saw that it was seen, and in the moment those jaws moved to snap him up the young god caught them and held them shut. They fought long and hard, and the serpent rolled them away from the fire into the coldness of the river where they sank in their battle to the bed beneath.

‘But the little god was tenacious and when the serpent finally got its mouth open, he stole one of it’s teeth and used it to cut the monster’s throat. Then finally, he dragged the serpent back to the shore, and set about honing weapons from it’s bones to defeat Lightning.

‘The fire watched him work, hungrily eating everything he threw away from the animal until several days later he was finished with his knives and spears.

‘“These you will use to kill my father?” The fire asked when he had finished, and he told it yes. He would use the serpents bones in place of his brother’s and his mother’s. “Then if you fail it will be due to your hubris,” the fire told him. 

‘The little god slept and ate well that night and in the morning he gathered his weapons on his back, and he gathered the fire in a lantern, and he set out a final time to hunt the sky-fire itself.’

‘Does he win?’ Kreisievic asks.

Yevgeny offers the man a flat look before continuing. ‘When he found Lightning it was at the top of the mountain. The sky above them was cold and dark. It rolled and crackled with thunder and seemed live. The little god looked on and saw he would not be fighting only Lightning but the entire sky. He felt fear and it shook into his bones like the slate from the clouds, but at his hip, the small lantern he had brought burned warmly with the fire inside.

‘Lightning stood before him a mountain in his own right. Feet planted on the summit, and face swallowed in the clouds. His mighty fists clenched far above the little god, and when he smiled one could only see his teeth through the mist. 

‘“You are the little god who has trespassed on my lands to hunt my kin,” the giant said. 

‘“I may yet be young but I am not small and when I claim your head, all will hear my name. My power will grow,” the little god told him.

‘And Lightning saw that he was young, and that he was brash, and that he had not seen the threads of politics in his life. He knew that there would be no reasoning with such a small god. A young god. A dumb god.

‘So he turned to the heavens and called down a great storm. Sky-fire hit the dry earth beneath their feet and scorched the rock around them. The mountain shook and rocks fell from its jagged cliffs. It danced past the young god, catching the lantern on his belt, and sending it spinning onto the mountain’s face where its glass broke and from it the Fire sprung forth so hot that the shards melted to sand once more.’

The men had leaned in, peering over the flames between them.

‘The fire swept over the mountain and into Lightning’s face, throwing his concentration so that the little god had just enough time to cast his spear.

‘From his hand to the air the hawk-blade took flight, and dove for it’s prey deep within the cage of the Giant’s chest, striking him through like the sky-fire he controlled.

‘Then the small god gathered his flames and butchered the Giant on the mountain top. He cooked the meat on the heat of the Giant’s son, and ate until he felt sick.

‘He stayed on the mountain top until Lightning was not but bones. He made mead of the Giant’s blood to drink and subsisted only on his flesh until his skin grew hot with fever and his eyes filled with visions of the Giant’s knowledge. 

‘For the first time in his life he became aware that he was nothing more than a pawn in a great game. That his actions on the stage of his life had always been, and may always be dictated by his king, his father. That in time they would be dictated by story tellers and historians who had never known him or understood him. That even the reality he now lived would someday warp and become propagandized in order to send more young men like himself into perilous battles for glory. 

‘He looked into the fire and saw many truths there, all of them at war.

‘Lightning may have been an evil Giant or he may have been a kindly father, a loving husband. He would never truly know the truth for he had not taken time to listen. And ultimately did it matter? He had succeeded for himself and his people surly they would benefit from the ailing of their enemy. What choice is right in war? To spare your enemy the rod and suffer their wrath or to delight in the killing of good men and women?’

‘Showing mercy is a fool’s errand,’ Kreisievic answers.

The other two men murmmur agreements.

‘I would also agree,’ Yevgeny says, taking a sip from his flask. ‘Even if we spare the enemy deaths by our hands they will eventually die. What point is there to deny them a proper death? One where they are allowed to fight for their survival if they are strong enough.’

‘Is that why you hated our orders to ambush?’ Dimitriov asks.

Yevgeny nods. ‘These women are left behind to guard their homes,’ he explains. ‘And beyond anything else is it not more fun to fight that which can fight back?’

‘I would rather not to die,’ Gorshek says from behind his thick scarf.

‘Cowardly,’ Yevgeny snaps. The fire snaps with him. ‘True men do not fear pain or death. You are a baby and so is that man we call ‘Captain’. Infants.’

Gorshek nods his head and slips his flask under his scarf for a nip.

‘Anyway,’ Yevgeny continues. ‘Once he had seen these things, and asked these questions, the little god went home to great applause from his people. They honored him well, and he was a hero, but the guilt of his actions caused him suffering and his unanswered questions haunted him. 

‘So he vowed to himself he would take his Fire at his side, that he may feed it and it may aid him and keep his family warm as he looked under every rock and cloud there was to see to learn all of the secrets hidden in the earth and skies. And from this vow Wisdom was born.’

‘I feel like I’m missing something,’ Kreisievic says.

Yevgeny snorts at him, ‘A basic education maybe.’

He is watching the boy again. Those eyes on him instead of on his own ailing mother even as he tends to her. ‘I’ll be back,’ he says, interrupting the shallow discussion his story has begun to generate in the other three to take his leave of the situation.

The fire dies slightly as he leaves the circle of its light and he listens to them scramble to feed it more wood.

It’s dark. There is no moon in the sky, and the stars are hidden behind clouds. He wonders if it will rain and shudders at the thought. As if the snow had not been bad enough.

The outskirts of the village come up on him faster than he’d like to expect and he’s left staring out into the darkness. The shore of the lake. Ice glistening in the lack light.

There’s movement. Out in the tree line. A pair of small animals. Black silhouettes on the black snow. The taste of something in the air. Not cold, or smoke, or even the way he affects the atmosphere. Something else. A differen’t kind of weight. A sharp flavor. The kind that splits the tongue and sears the throat. 

He swallows it.


	2. Settlement

Their first morning in the village passes uneventfully, bleeding into the first day. Yevgeny is busied with monotonous tasks. His mind feels as though over the course of the hours of his work it opens up and pours out of him like sand. The boredom feels so thick as to be potentially life threatening.

Many times he tries, and many times he fails to get the captain to assign him to seeing after the prisoners.

By midday, they’ve broken into the village food stores, and begun cooking for everyone. Prisoners watch on with equal hunger and worry as their dried meats are repurposed in different cultural ways than they’re used to. 

Yevgeny is sent out with some of the less culinary men to dig a trench around the village.

‘This list,’ Gorshek says, resting on the handle of his shovel. ‘These things. What do you need them for?’

‘It’s an idea I got,’ Yevgeny explains, not bothering to stop his work and turn to the man, ‘from some CIA intelligence my father intercepted which he thought laughable enough to discuss at the dinner table last Christmas.’

Gorshek scoffs at him. ‘What kind of intelligence?’ He asks.

‘It was one of their plans for dispatching Hitler as a dictator. They thought if they managed to pump him up on Estrogen pills he would become too effeminate to inspire his troops, loose his charisma and his lust for blood. Last I heard they are still trying it. I hope they succeed,’ Yevgeny tells him.

‘Would that really work?”

Yevgeny stops, looking up at the sky. He thinks of his mother. Her cruel sense of humor and her sharp tongue. How she had personally taken up his punishment rather than leave it to his nannies because that was what she got most out of being a mother. How she could woo a room into loving or hating her, fearing her as they lapped at her feet or tried to escape her presence.

‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘But I think I would get a kick out of seeing the jiggle of his massive titties as he gesticulated during a speech.’

‘Is that what keeps your sleeping bag warm at night?’ Gorshek asks.

Yevgeny shakes his head, smiling at the thought. ‘I haven’t thought of a single other thing in all this time. If I had already inherrited my father’s fortune I would be funding the operation myself.’

‘You think this is all a joke don’t you?’

‘No but I see no problem with having a laugh. And if it wasn’t Hitler it might be something that could get my attention,’ Yevgeny told him, picking his shovel back up to continue working.

‘So like a lady boy.’

The frozen ground crunches around the head of the spade. ‘Exactly.’

‘This is more sick and fucked up than what you did to that boy in Poland,’ Gorshek says then.

‘If you have the power to judge me you must be immune to burning,’ Volgin warns.

Gorshek picks his shovel back up and goes back to digging without saying anything else. 

The day wears on. They finish the trench half way, so that it stretches like a crescent around the village. And start digging on the other side. 

By the time they finish it’s dark out. They accept dinner, and retire to the fire for their rest. 

Yevgeny is disappointed to see the prisoners have been seen to proper housing, and are tucked away so he is not able to look at the boy. 

‘What is this shit?’ He asks about four bites into his soup.

‘Finnish borscht,’ his Captain tells him jovially.

Obviously the man is happy to see him displeased.

Yevgeny upturns his bowl on the man’s head, and replaces his meal with the one in the man’s hand.

The group around the fire goes silent. The men on watch turn to see what the commotion is, staring at the Captain as he vibrates with silent rage.

‘Junior Seargent Volgin,’ the man begins, not even bothering to push the bowl back from his eyes or wipe the soup from his face.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Yevgeny asks before the man can continue.

He falls silent again. Fists clenched at his sides, back still trembling with all the will it takes to hold together such a damaged pride.

‘I will be writing home about your escalating insubordination,’ he finally says.

Yevgeny clicks his tongue. ‘Oh I would not do that if I were you, Captain,’ he warns.

‘And if you intend to threaten me our supperiors will hear of that too!’ the Captain shouts, clicks his heals together, turns and marches away like a little mechanical soldier all with a bowl of soup on his head.

Once he’s in his tent, Yevgeny looks at the shocked faces of the other men and takes the time to laugh. Recluctantly, they join in, knowing the Captain can say nothing so long as he doesn’t know who exactly laughed. 

‘Our superiors will hear of that too!,’ Yevgeny mocks, taking another bite of the man’s soup. ‘A real man would have killed me.’

Dimitriov leans in on his right, still calming himself from his amusement, and says, ‘You really need to stop doing that.’

‘What?’ Yevgeny asks.

‘Mocking him. Ignoring orders,’ Dimitriov specifies. ‘How will you ever get promoted?’

‘I will be promoted because they cannot afford not to promote me,’ Yevgeny explains.

Dimitriov shakes his head. ‘Money cannot get you everywhere, Volgin.’

Volgin offers him a chuckle. ‘On the contrary comrade. Money will not get you everywhere. I, on the other hand, am a completely different story.’

That night, when they sleep, they can hear the wolves in the woods. Singing early dirges for the prisoners already weakening under the strain of interrogation. 

By first light their newly de-souped Captain is issuing orders. Three men to guard and manage prisoners. Again: Kreisievic, Dimitriov, and Petrovich. Four men to continue digging the trenches. Again: Volgin, Gorshek, Vasiliev, And Orlovis. And two men to gather wood for building barricades: Kurpin and Medved.

The dirt is starting to get to him. There’s no mind in it. Simply another repetition of an already practiced movement. Jam, kick, lift, throw. Jam, kick, lift, throw. Over and over again.

He in growing restless and antsy. His thoughts keep wandering to the boy. He doesn’t know if Kreisievic has remembered his words. He’s had no opprotunity to check. Occasionally he wonders if the boy’s mother has died yet, it would be a shame if she has. He would very much like to kill her himself. 

Or maybe he’d like to fuck her. 

He hasn’t quiet decided yet.

Her fire is worth owning though, and he can see it in the boy. Behind his eyes. They have the same pretty eyes.

Gorshek yelps before Yevgeny notices how hot he’s allowed the air to get in the hole they’re standing in.

‘You’re burning me,’ the man complains, showing the pinked skin on his left arm.

Yevgeny laughs. 

‘It’s not funny, Volgin!’

It is. 

It’s about the only funny thing that happens all day.

Noon finds him lying on his back on the edge of town ignoring his food to stare blankly at the sky. There has to be something worth doing in middle of nowhere Finland but he can’t think of what.

Well it would be fun to fuck with the Finns but he’s not allowed to even see them anymore because he’s upset his captain so much.

He should kill the captain, he thinks just as a pair of tiny legs go flying past him.

‘Catch That fucking kid,’ Kreisievic is shouting from down the road.

Yevgeny cranes his head up and around to get an eye on the fleeing captive. A hat obscures the back of the child’s head, baggy clothes their body. 

He rolls to his feet, stretches his legs out for a moment, and launches after them down the road. There’s about three hundred meters between them and the trench which Yevgeny is deeply aware they have dug to around five feet. Not exactly a threat to a larger man but deep for a child to fall into at a run. Which might be fun depending on the results.

For a moment it seems as if the child will run directly into it, and he plays out simulations of how that might go. Rehearsal dinners for broken bones. But they swerve right before it.

Intelligent. Aware of being chased by someone larger and supposedly less agile than themself. He turns after them, snagging them by the back of their baggy shirt and hurling them into the trench.

There’s a satisfying woofing sound as they hit the damp earth and the air is forced out of their ribs.

‘Ring out!’ Yevgeny jokes as Kreisievic jogs up beside him.

‘Thank you,’ he says, laying a hand on Yevgeny’s bare bicep.

Yevgeny flinches at the touch, and is of half a mind to throw the luitenant after the child.

‘Who is this?’ He asks instead, taking a pointed step away.

Kreisievic ignores his discomfort as he looks down into the trench at the escapee.

‘The women have been calling him Atto, but none of them will tell us their real names. Some religious thing,’ Kreisievic explains.

Yevgeny hums his understanding.

‘I think this is the boy you singled out, actually.’

‘Yes, I recognize him,’ Yevgeny says. ‘Got spunk doesn’t he?’

Kreisievic makes a face, as Yevgeny jumps down into the trench, and gathers the boy up by his shirt collar. ‘I guess you could say that.’

Yevgeny smiles as he appraises his new charge, sliding a hand up to tilt the boy’s face for a better view. ‘Pretty too.’

‘I actually need him back,’ Kreisievic says then, nerves creeping up into his voice.

Yevgeny tears his eyes away from the defiant expression on the kid’s face to glare at him.

‘Fine,’ he says, thrusting the boy into the other man’s chest. ‘Take him. I’m too busy to attend to him yet anyway.’

The boy doesn’t look relieved by the transition. In fact he doesn’t even seem shaken in the slightest by their behavior. As if it’s exactly what he’d expect from two Russian brutes. 

The second Kreisievic’s out of sight, Yevgeny punches the nearest wall, driving his fist straight through the bricks, and leaving them melted smooth around him. 

‘Fuck Finland.’

By the time the first deserters make their way innocently through their village, they’ve been in place and working tirelessly the better part of a week. Badly burned buildings have been hollowed out, usable materials repurposed. Their camp has gone from basic to near permanent with baracades and a few makeshift buildings.

The deserters are nervous and wide eyed. Their uniforms are dirty and badly maintained. Their faces are grimey. They stink like fear and blood and shit. Looking stupid in hope of pity and a meal from once comrades. 

‘Heading back to the motherland?’ Kreisievic asks, standing on the ladder by the gate to their barricade. 

‘Let me see them,’ Yevgeny demands from the ground at his side.

Kreisievic hushes him.

‘No sir, we’ve been speared from our unit. A militia came down from the hills in the night and launched arrows on us. In the panic we’ve become lost. We only wish to find a radio that we may return to our posts,’ one of them says.

Kreisievic gives Yevgeny a withering look before saying, ‘Of course comrades.’ Then he ducks his head down under the fence, into Yevgeny’s face. ‘If you want to see so bad go and let them in.’

Their names are Pasternak and Utkin. They’re enlisted men in the Red Army. And they’re not all too concerned with the radio. In fact they’re much more interested in the food and drink. The company. Yevgeny watches them closely.

They’re relaxing. So close to the border they’re comfortable even surrounded by Secret Police. 

They decide to stay the night, and Yevgeny asks for a spot on the watch. 

He spends the time outside their tent. Waiting.

And when they get up to sneak away in the early morning hours, he’s ready.

Their shocked faces tell him everything as he assures them this is exactly what he has been waiting for since they arrived. 

Their screams wake the others. Before he can have too much fun, but it’s enough for now to have watched their skin bubble and peel back from where his hands seized around their throats.

They cry tears of gratitude when Kreisievic and Dimitriov haul them away to the cells and he listens silently to the way they say the word monster.

That fear is his power. It fuels him.


	3. The Howling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rank changes for greater accuracy
> 
> Warnings for violence and death in this chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

The crying starts beyond the tree line. A warbling sound, high, and trilling. It wakes him instantly in the night. He doesn’t need to have heard it before to know it as a war cry.

It echoes itself then in the heart of the camp where the prisoners are. Like the calls of lonely wolves.

Finally. Finally they come. Finally they return home for the smoke they saw on the horizon. Finally the deserters lead them here. 

He’s out beyond the barricade as soon as he can get his boots on, staring into the darkness like the mere squint of his eyes can banish it.

In the stillness. In the silence. He can hear them.

The long and drawn out crunch of snow. Not beneath a foot, but beneath some sort of sled. Something like a ski.

Fucking Finns. Skiing in the dark on light snow in a forest, even one as sparse as what surrounded the village, is suicide but here they are. And armed to the teeth.

The wind has that taste to it. It slices his tongue as he opens his mouth to breathe. He sparks like a furnace, drawing in fresh air to stoke the flames. It’s heavy and weighty but he has no time to think about it. That meaningless omen. Some sign of something beyond his comprehension. 

He wonders if it’s bows or rifles. Can a rifle man on skis recover from the recoil? Keep his balance? 

The twang of a bow string answers his question. 

It’s followed in quick succession by at least five more. He can’t tell is it’s multiple archers or one changin his position very quickly. 

The arrows hit the wall and groun around him, not warnings, but off for being aimed at his sparks. Likely they thought him a volley of rifles behind the gate.

The men inside camp are rushing about now, waking up to the cacophony of noise the prisoners continue to make.

The archers are silent.

Yevgeny holds his hands down by his knees and lowers himself into a lunge. Preparation is key. He can’t see them, but he can hear them. He closes his eyes, and feels the heat rise under his hands.

They’re keeping their distance out there, sticking to the thicker snow, the snow he hasn’t already melted. He could do something about that.

One hand, held rigid, palm out, he directs the spray right into the unburnt aspens on the west end of town. They go up like Christmas lights, and Yevgeny catches the sound of one of them screaming. Smells crisping flesh.

The power’s heady. It always is. He hopes he got the bastard bad.

‘Volgin get back behind the gate!’ The Captain shouts, but he’s not listening.

He aims another cone a bit to the left of his first strike and sets up mother strip of trees.

There’s yelling, and crying in the woods. Warbling calls like the ones that woke him. Rallying cries. 

Damn that Scandanavian spirit.

‘I gave you an order, Junior Seargent!’ The Captain insists.

Yevgeny’s listening now but not to the man. He’s listening to the ruckus in the forest. He knows just enough Finish to be able to tell they’re loosing mobility. At least one of them is injured. 

‘Wolves,’ he mutters to himself, thinking of the boy. His name and the fierce look on his face. ‘Not noble. Not wise. Not mythical. Just beasts. No more than dogs.’

‘Junior Seargent get back behind the wall this instant!’ 

Yevgeny doesn’t even think as he does it. He simply turns on his heel and lights the fence up as bright and as hot as he lit the forest. A few men shout, and he hears them dive out of the way. The captain screams.

He continues to fail to think about it as he goes charging back into the woods. He doesn’t much care. He’s more interested in the wolves.

He’s not like these delicate porcelain men around him. The flames don’t hurt him. They singe his clothes as he steps through them but they slid over his skin like butter. Warm and soothing. A texture between the ethereal and the solid. And they cling to him.

An arrow wizzed by the crests of his shoulder blades, drawing an arch of air along the back of his under shirt, and he whips his head in that direction. 

The man’s ski is stuck under a root, twisted and sunk into the slushy mud the melting ice has formed. Hemmed in by fire on either side. Stuck in trying to free himself by the appearance of a monster.

Yevgeny smiles at him.

‘It is good to see you,’ he greats in Russian, as if they are old friends though they are not. He holds hard eye contact with the smaller man as he advances. ‘Your wife told me so much of you. How you would come to save her. While I raped her to death!’

It’s not true and it doesn’t need to be, but it boils what blood his fire has simmered in the man. He draws an arrow like a knife, and lunges to clear the gap, but looses his balance when he finds Yevgeny just out of arm’s reach. Idiot. And they say older men were supposed to be more cool headed.

This one seems in his thirties.

Yevgeny brings up a knee, and uses his fist to amplifythe forward momentum of the fall by slamming it into the back of his head. His nose crunches wetly as it bounces off his patella.

He either looses consciousness or dies instantly. Either way it doesn’t matter. The trees will form his funeral pyre. Prey that can’t fight back is boring. Almost useless to him but not entirely. He splits the stuck ski from the man’s boot by kicking it. A sound followed by the satisfying crunch of both wood and bone as the man’s ankle crushes with the motion. 

He looks tiny, like a plastic soldier rather than a real militia man. His bloodied face doesn’t even twitch in pain. Dead then. So very delicate. 

Yevgeny picks him up by the back of his neck, swinging him limply as he continues to march through the fire.

‘Where are you?’ He demands of the darkness around his light. 

Another bow string twangs, and he holds up the body to absorb the fire. It twitches limply.

‘See your comrade?’ Yevgeny demands. ‘I killed him in one hit, and awed, his spirit protects me!’ 

There’s a quiet curse just out of sight, and He tracks the sound of skis moving on melting snow to his right.

They’re close enough, Yevgeny can hear the bow string stretch taught this time. The moment is almost intimate in it’s anticipation, as the string stretches. As he hears the sound. 

‘You will be awed too,’ he promises, and sets the corpse alight before hurling it at the hidden archer.

The man screams as his comrade’s burning body pins him down with all the weight of a limp boar. He doesn’t stop screaming. 

Yevgeny doesn’t know if it’s out of physical or psychological pain. The situation has to evoke some of both, he imagines. He advances slowly, taking his time in watching the struggle, trying to categorize the response. 

But the other wolves in the pack are drawn by the noise like vultures.

An arrow sinks itself into the back of Yevgeny’s shoulder.

He howls, spinning on his heels and swinging his uninjured arm in an arch. More flames invelope the woods. Two more sets of screams join the second man’s.

Yevgeny takes a moment to savor them before he snaps the arrow’s shaft off.

‘All of you mongrel sons of bitches!’ He shouts and this is the damage you can do me?’

Screams back at camp attract his attention over the crackle of flames then, and he looks back through the burning trees to see Finns have stormed through the burning hole in the fence.

He leaves the forest burning as he chases his own trail back to the commotion. In retrospect, he thinks as he steps over the captain’s burned corpse, that had been a dumb fucking move. Not strategically sound to blast a hole in your own defenses and then not even stand in position to protect it.

His mind chides him with his grandmother’s voice as he visually combs the camp.

Kreisievic is locked in a fistfight over a rifle with some idiot villager a few feet ahead of him so he reaches over, and grabs the man by his head before slamming it into the floor.

‘Thanks,’ Kreisievic says, with wide eyes. 

It’s not a look Yevgeny has seen on his face for a few months, but he appreciates that sort of reverence all the more for it.

‘Follow me,’ he says, as if their ranks are irrelevant. 

With the gap in power between them physically they almost are.

Kreisievic doesn’t question it.

‘Debrief me,’ Yevgeny demands as they move through the camp. 

‘The prisoners revolted,’ Kreisievic says. ‘That boy you singled out, he slipped his restrains again, and killed Dimitriov.’

Yevgeny groans under his breath. ‘I so look forward to breaking that one,’ he mutters. ‘How did he do it?’

‘Slit his throat with his teeth,’ Kreisievic says.

Yevgeny swears under his breath but Kreisievic continues.

‘Then in the commotion, something happened to the fence, and the militia started pouring through. But it took us time to find the compromise, and by the time we had we were overwhelmed. What are you looking for?’

The quick segue throws Yevgeny for a loop for a second and he has to scramble mentally for an answer. 

‘The men,’ he says too quickly after a second of pause. 

‘Most of them are back with the prisoners trying to keep the militia away from them.’

‘And what of the deserters?’ 

‘I killed them the second the chaos errupted,’ Kreisievic reports.

‘Good man,’ Yevgeny tells him, turning toward the prisoner cells. ‘I may even let you be promoted to captain when this is over.’

Kreisievic’ s face went ashen all in that moment. ‘Did something happen to the captain?’ He demanded.

Yevgeny just laughed at him.

The prisoners had been stuffed into cells in the hollowed out grain storage which had proved to be the most fire proof and generally fortified building in the village to no one’s great surprise. Now that it’s the center of his attention, Yevgeny can clearly see the men left alive in his unit defending it’s entrance from a group of about twelve Finns.

‘NKVD Secret Inspection Squad 23! Our captain is dead and Junior Lieutenant Kreisievic has nominated me as acting captain! You are all to go inside with the prisoners and empty your canteens onto the inside of the door!’ Yevgeny shouted.

The men look at each other with confusion for a moment before listening.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Kreisievic gripes.

‘You didn’t have to,’ Yevgeny tells him.

The Finns have turned to them and are regarding them with suspicion.

‘What do you plan to do with two men against twelve,?’ One of them asks in Russian, his accent thick.

‘The same thing I did to your Forrest,’ Yevgeny says, sparking flames in his palms once more. ‘The same thing I did your village.’

The men shuffle fearfully, muttering to each other in Finnish as Yevgeny showboats.

‘I suppose you could call this death by firing squad,’ he jokes in English to Kreisievic.

The man supresses a chuckle just as a tiny form come’s vaulting down from the top of the grain store onto Yevgeny’s Head.

Yevgeny swears, knocked off balnce by the sudden collision. Hands still wreathed in fire he reaches up and grabs the tiny mongrel off him by the ankles. The boy, of course it’s the boy, screeches as Yevgeny’s hands burn layers skin away from the bare strips under his pants his boots had covered last time he escaped.

Kreisievic must have taken them to keep him from running out into the snow. Good man. That had been a boon.

He drops the boy unceremoniously, turning his attention back to the remaining militia. Four of them have managed to run off in the seconds it took Yevgeny to wrangle his small inconvenience. Kreisievic’ s killed a fifth.

Of the seven still remaining, the pained look on one who spoke’s face tells him that is his little prize’s father.

‘This is yours?’ He asks the man.

The man nods. 

Yevgeny smiles at him, friendly. ‘Then I won’t scar you by telling you his fate,’ he taunts.

The rage that comes to the man’s face is gone in an instant. 

‘Ooh. A disciplined man. This moves me,’ Yevgeny says.

He pulls the gun from his belt, and shoots the man standing next to the one he’s speaking to directly in the throat.

The man flinches, and turns to stare in horror as his comrade drowns on himself.

‘This is fun, isn’t it, Kreisievic?’ Yevgeny asks, taking aim at the man on the speaker’s other side.

One of the men on the end of the line makes a run for it and Kreisievic picks him off. 

‘Where are your friends who left you here?’ Yevgeny asks. ‘Are they deserters?’

The boy is grunting in the dirt at his feet, and he places a foot on that tiny back before it can worm itself away to safety.

The man starts at him, but training the gun on the boy is more than enough to keep him in place. 

‘On second thought, you are a strong man. I think you can hear the truth,’ Yevgeny says, still keeping the gun pointed at the child’s head.

The man winces just anticipating what he’ll ay next.

One of the other three men standing against the wall breaks out in Finnish, accusing the man who had spoken of weakness for letting them pick off his brothers.

And the man speaks back in the same tongue saying ‘look at that monster he’s some sort of troll or giant, Only the gods can protect us now.’

Yevgeny smiles. ‘You flatter me,’ he says. ‘I am a reminder that we still exist.’

The man’s eyes were wide, pupils pin pricks even in the firelight that was slowly enveloping their camp. He began to pray, softly and quietly, as if marshaling his strength.

‘Come now, Viking,’ Yevgeny told him. ‘Meet your death like a proper warrior.’


	4. Faces Of Treason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death and violence warnings continue (Volgin's gotta Volg)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

The man comes out like a man resigned to execution.

Yevgeny kicks the boy behind him, sheaths his gun and pulls his fists up, lowers into stance. 

The Finn does not tremble. His fear brews internally, yes, but he has the will to push past it and accept reality.

In the moment of anticipation as they come to face one mother, the boy shouts something too quickly for Yevgeny to parse and the man holds up a comforting hand. He let’s them have the fleeting family moment without questioning it.

‘Your comrades truly are deserters,’ He mocks. ‘They shit themselves in the face of me. Like tiny babies.’

‘I do not blame them,’ the man says, still speaking polite but accented Russian, ‘running at the sight of a monster their mother once warned them of.’

‘Then I thank their mothers’ loose tongues that all of these grown boys recognize me as their new father by sight.’

The man pulls a face at the vulgarity, but says nothing. He stands still a moment, as if trying to think what to do, before mechanically pulling a knife from his belt.

‘I will use this?’ He asks, almost like a child. 

Yevgeny scoffs at him. Scared men are often like this and it has a habit of ruining his mood. ‘You do not need to ask me what weapon to use. I am younger than you,’ he says.

He gets looked up and down for the comment as if it’s unbelievable, and offers a hearty eye roll. 

‘You annoy me,’ Yevgeny hisses. The only warning that he plans to attack at all.

The man is waiting for him with baited breath and barely sees him coming still. He brings the knife up, a desperate attempt to perry Yevgeny’s incoming punch. The sparks on Yevgeny’s fist fizzle and brighten in reaction to the metal.

There’s a deafening crack as he brings his knuckles down onto the flat of the blade and forces it into the man’s face. 

His knees start to give out immediately but Yevgeny grabs him by the shoulder before he can slump to the ground. 

‘You must be a good man,’ he says, leaning in so that his lips bite air by a hat-covered ear. ‘But there is no room for good men here.’

The Finn groans, and Yevgeny snaps his neck as simply as he’d pop the top off a beer bottle.

A boyish gasp rises up from somehwere behind His knees. He turns. Offers a smile. Hard words always carry better on curved lips.

‘They can’t save you,’ he says, pointing to the other three men lined up against the store house, ignoring the agonal breathing of the near-corpse beneath him as he turns his attention back to them.

‘Are you warriors?’ He asks.

Pale grey faces.

One imbicile shakes his head no, and lowers the bow in his hand as if he means to drop it.

Yevgeny motions to Kreisievic to shoot him.

‘I have no respect for civilians,’ Yevgeny tells the last two Finns. ‘A civilian is simply an untrained dog. It may be dangerous. Unpredictable. But it has no use. It is a mongrel. A stray. Exactly the kind of dog they send catchers like us to dispose of.

‘I ask again. Are you warriors? Or do you die like dogs?’

They die like dogs.

Yevgeny opens the door to the grain storage to find the his men holding the prisoners at gunpoint.

‘The militia is dead and deserted,’ he says. ‘The cowards who ran will be hunted down. Your rebellion is over.’

Atto’s mother, still recovering from her burns, glares at him, full of defiance. 

He regards her a moment. ‘Do you speak for the rest as your husband spoke for his men?’ He asks.

She nods solemnly. 

‘So the both of you are of some rank and import,’ he concludes.

‘Yes,’ she says. A simple near universal word. 

‘And your boy takes after your initiative.’

She hides her eyes behind blonde eyelashes. 

‘This is why he was hurt today despite my good word. See to it that you keep him in line,’ he hisses.

Her lips roll against each other sheepishly.

The mood in the room has cut itself in half from tense to cowed. The prisoners all seem to hang their heads or turn their faces. 

‘How many men have we lost?’ He asks Gorshek, quickly loosing interest in their broken spirits. 

‘Just one,’ Gorshek tells him, pointing to Dimitriov’s limp body in the corner.

Yevgeny feels his dick jump in his pants thinking about how viscous his charge must be to have done that.

‘Make that two. Our captain was killed when the militia men compromised the fence,’ he says, trying to keep his mind on what’s relevant and pressing. 

Gorshek, and a few of the other men swear under their breaths. 

‘How did they overtake us so quickly?’ Medved demands.

Yevgeny takes the moment to step outside rather than be caught in the next wave of conversation, blinking as his eyes readjust to the heavy smoke and bright flames billowing along the fence.

In the future, he notes to himself, he’ll need to be sure to show more restraint. Until then he just has to find a way to clean this all up.

Gorshek is quick on his heels as he steps away from the holding cell. 

‘How did they overtake us so quickly, Volgin?’ He demands.

‘I’m not sure, I wasn’t in camp when it happened,’ Yevgeny says.

‘And where were you instead? Lighting the whole forest on fire?’ Gorshek rages.

Yevgeny looks back over his shoulder to fix the shorter man with a flat look.

‘You fucking pig!’ Gorshek shouts. ‘You should have stayed to protect the camp.’

‘Probably,’ Yevgeny agrees. ‘But that’s not what happened is it?’

Gorshek growls, low in his throat. ‘This is your fault,’ he insists. ‘I don’t know how it is but it’s your fault.’

Yevgeny shrugs, and pulls to a stop at the burned out crater in the fence beside the gate. 

The sound Gorshek makes is dead center between a gasp and a choke. The chorus of answering indignant cries tells him the entire surviving unit has followed as well.

‘You did this!’ Gorshek shouts.

‘No,’ Yevgeny denies. ‘It was the Finns. I told you I was out there but I wasn’t the only one setting the fire. They had flame throwers.’

‘Finns. On skis. With flame throwers,’ Gorshek clarifies.

‘Yeah I wasn’t sure how to feel about that,’ Yevgeny tells him.

Gorshek makes another indignant squawk before saying, ‘I know how to feel about it I don’t believe it!’

‘Sort of like they were steeling my schtick,’ Yevgeny presses.

‘They were- There’s no evidence of any flame throwers! I see none on the Finish bodies outside the storehouse! Why would the villagers use flame throwers on their own village? Does that make sense to you?’ Gorshek demands. And he has the audacity to shove a finger at the larger man. The nerve.

Yevgeny turns on him, looming into his space. ‘Honestly what does it matter what I’ve done? These idiot farmers would have massacared you all in your sleep if I had not been here. You would all be dead. What does it matter if I killed one man when I protected the rest.’

‘Not Dimitriov,’ Petrovitch pipes up.

‘Dimitriov was killed by a prisoner because of his own stupidity. Nothing could have protected that fool not even the gods.’ Yevgeny counters.

Medeved elbows Kreisievic in the ribs. ‘What do you think?’

There’s a silence that falls over the men as they resort back to their natural ranks, looking to their remaining superior. But Kreisievic just raises a hand and waves them off.

‘I’m too confused to know what to think,’ he says. ‘I’m going back to sleep.’

But that will be no end to Gorshek’s outrage. ‘How can you say that?’ He continues. ‘This is treason! You should be shot for this!’

‘And will you be the one doing the shooting?’ Yevgeny asks. He half expects the Lieutenant to intervene but the man cannot be bothered to trifle any longer with their squabbles. He’s already halfway back into his tent.

‘Our captain lies dead at your feet!’ Gorshek cries, regaining the attention of the men that remain to watch them settle the issue.

‘That is a burned corpse how can you tell if it’s your captain?’ Yevgeny asks.

Gorshek points to the boots on his own feet. ‘Because he wears Russian boots, Volgin. Same as mine.’

‘If you do not drop the matter I will kill you! All of you! And you know that I could do it and I could blame it on the Finns or the Nazis and our superiors would never know!’ Yevgeny shouts.

The men recoil from him. But Gorshek stays glaring into his face.

‘I know your secret, Volgin,’ he threatens. ‘I know all about the water.’

Again, another knee jerk reaction, and he chides himself for it even as he watches himself do it. He picks Gorshek up by his little head and smashes his face into the blunt end of the nearest tent pole.

It makes a sick wet sound as it finds a home in the man’s grey matter. Yevgeny lets go, expecting that to be a clean death, but apparently the rage in Gorshek’s system has a will of it’s own to be expressed because instead of hanging limp or sloughing off, the body begins to lock and seize up.

‘Fuck,’ Yevgeny says stepping back as the twitching corpse dislodges itself from the pole and careens back. ‘And I liked that man,’ he tells the rest of them, who continue to look on horrified. 

‘Shame,’ he mutters to himself. Before dusting his hands off. 

‘Well,’ he projects, looking around at the other men. ‘It’s a shame the Finns have killed three of our men tonight, but we will have the rest of their heads in revenge come the morning. For now, let us gather the bodies and burn them.’

They nod slowly, despondently, before drifting to follow the command.


	5. A Good God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprised by how many hits this is getting I really didn’t expect anyone to be interested in this and was only writing it for my wife lmao so thanks for reading

Come the morning, all the fires have burned themselves out to ash. Few trees remain unburnt to fix the fence, and the remaining men curse him for it under their breaths, but are clearly too scared to take action against him. He ponders the possibility of mutiny, and plans to start sleeping with his spare pistol under his pillow.

Kreisievic wakes at the crest of dawn and watches blankly as Medved fishes Gorshek’s metal effects from one of the ash piles.

He sits down next to Yevgeny heavily.

‘I wish I could say I’m surprised that you killed him,’ he mutters, just loud enough for the larger man to hear him. 

Yevgeny grunts.

‘You are young, Volgin, I understand this. I see it, not on the papers you use, but in your behavior. How old are you?’ Kreisievic asks.

‘Does it matter?’ Yevgeny counters.

The man pulls his face away with a regrettable little shake of his head. His lips click as they pull apart from each other. ‘I suppose not,’ he says.

Yevgeny is surprised then by the thought that he is actually somewhat fond of Kreisievic. As fond as he supposes he could really be of anyone. Slightly fonder than he’d been of Gorshek.

‘And you come from money,’ Kreisievic observes, pointing to the custom red leather on Yevgeny’s boots.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I suppose you are quite a bit different from the other men here,’ Kreisievic says, ‘In more ways than just what you are able to do that no other man can. You cannot understand us.’

‘Not really,’ Yevgeny admits. 

Kreisievic rubs his hands together in a motion that falls between thoughtfulness and nerves. ‘Do you understand me?’ He asks.

‘I understand that you are a smart man who does not wish to die here,’ Yevgeny says, taking a sip of his coffee.

Kreisievic nods. ‘And I see that you appreciate this about me, but I need you to understand that every man here is the same as me. They are all smart men who don’t want to die here. And when they see you, their comrade, kill one of their own, two of their own, that can make it hard for them to have faith they will make it home to their families,’ he explains.

‘I could see that,’ Yevgeny says. ‘I could understand even. If I was their comrade. But this whole time I have been sperate from the rest of you. I have been above you.’

Kreisievic is silent for a long moment before he thinks what to say next. ‘I understand this,’ he says finally, lips moving against the second knuckles of his grasped fingers, eyes fixed on the ground. Thoughtful. ‘You are stronger than we are. I have seen you kill strong men with a single blow. I have seen you pick grown men up like babies. I have seen you conjure fire, and even lightning,’ he admits. ‘You are separate. Something has elevated you above us. I see this. I do not deny it. No one here wishes to deny it.’

Yevgeny watches him with close interest, curious to find the point of these assurances.

‘That is why they are so worried,’ Kreisievic tells him. ‘Imagine for a moment you are not a powerful man, Volgin, and you are at the mercy of one. Imagine your life is in his hands until you return home to the soil of your motherland. That if you anger him, or he does not care to protect you, you will die hundreds of miles from the people you love.’

‘I cannot imagine this,’ Yevgeny admits. ‘I am not weak enough to love anyone.’

The look on Kreisievic’s face is almost sad, but the man knows better than to show him pitty.

‘Then imagine you were a god. Would it not be your duty to protect those who believe in you?’ Kreisievic asks.

Yevgeny scans the camp slowly, the burnt fences, the hunched backs of the men, as they pile debris and clear ash. ‘I suppose,’ he says.

‘Then, I beg you, please use your power to protect us, rather than turn it against us. All we wish is to be allowed to have faith in you as our comrade,’ Kreisievic says. 

There’s a preassure on Yevgeny’s arm. The tender feeling of skin on skin. He looks down in awe to see Kreisievic’s hand laid over his biceps. ‘Fine,’ he says.

Kreisievic gives him a small nod before rising to see to the men. ‘Thank you,’ he throws over his shoulder.

Yevgeny lets it hang in the air unacknowledged. 

By the time the supply run gets there the camp is beginning to look more like a camp again but the runners, give them wide, gaping looks of awe regardless.

One of them asks after Gorshek and Medved shoots Yevgeny a dirty look that he has to pointedly ignore before saying he was killed by raiding Finns in the night. Yevgeny, thinks about his spare pistol and the pillow, and how even if they got the jump on him he’d probably be pull through fine. They’re tiny and only human after all.

Not that he has any concrete evidence to support that he himself is not only human. It’s just something he knows deep down in his bones. Something he remembers whispered off his mother’s acrid lips when he was near infantile. Something the nannies had echoed. 

Their suppliers leave them with promises of reporting back to superiors. And Kreisievic thanks them for circumventing the continually instated radio silence.

Once the carriage pulls away from the supply crates the men leave behind, Yevgeny is quick to go through them all. The medicines he’d ordered are packed neatly into the corner of the third box. 

He examines the little bottles curiously before turning to Kreisievic.

‘The Boy is sick,’ he says, knowing Gorshek was the only man who knew of true reasons for ordering these. ‘You will need to crush one of these pills into each of his daily meals and make sure he eats all of it.’

‘If he’s sick won’t he just willingly take the medicine?’ Kreisievic asks.

Yevgeny huffs. ‘It’s a mental sickness. This is a sedative. The boy believes himself to be an actual wolf. Like his namesake. That’s why he killed Dimitriov.’

Kreisievic takes one of the bottles, makes an odd face. ‘I’ve never heard of this mental sickness,’ he said.

‘It’s very uncommon, but it has been known to happen that people will become delusional enough to believe they’re animals.’

‘I see. That is most disturbing,’ Kreisievic mutters. ‘He will be sedated.’

‘Of course,’ Yevgeny says, handing over the second bottle before excusing himself.

The reconstruction goes slowly. Kreisievic oversees it with a mournful look on his face that Yevgeny has to keep himself from poking fun at as he packs his bag for the day.

‘Eyes forward,’ Petrovich hisses at him as he steels another look at the pout on the Lieutenant’s lower lip.

Yevgeny shoots him a look and he quickly goes about minding his own business. ‘Eyes forward,’ Yevgeny mocks.

Petrovich’s ears go pink and his mouth twists but he still manages, ‘I’m not the one mooning at our superior am I?’

Yevgeny reaches over and tugs the man’s hat down snuggly over his eyes. Which doesn’t get the response he hopes for when Petrovich simply fixes it and returns to untangling his rope without so much as a fuss. 

‘Could you try to act like an adult for five minutes? Just five?’ Medved asks as Yevgeny does up the buckle on his pack and slings it over a shoulder.

Yevgeny looks him up and down. Small man, sitting against a burned out stump with some fence debris in his lap, trying to tack it back together with some nails, wrestling to keep the hammer balanced on a plank on his thigh as he positions another nail.

So Yevgeny lifts his foot and kicks one of the boards directly down, bouncing Medved’s hand, and the nail he was holding, directly into his face. The hammer lands dully in the dust a few feet.

He’s about to gloat about it when Kreisievic calls over, ‘Volgin! What did we talk about?’

Yevgeny grumbles before turning to the hole he’d made in the fence next to the gate. He’s intent on moving out on his own. He needs the space and the quiet.

The sun burns, a heavy torch in the sky, beating down over the back and shoulders of his dark uniform coat as he moves through the spotty shade beneath burned out Aspens. 

In the calm stillness of the air, he is hunting for tracks. 

The snow is melting further despite their slide from November into December. It’s formed pools of black ice between tree roots after it’s night-time trist with the heat of his fire. He comes first on the men he had killed last night. Three lying burnt in a line in the snow. Two, one on top of the other, not far from them.

Yevgeny approaches the pair, remembering that he had not taken the time to finish off the second man in it. All he can see of him is a fur boot, and a glove sticking out from under the corpse of his once meat shield.

He pulls the meat bag back, and the man coughs weakly.

‘Fuck,’ Yevgeny says, looking at the degree of his burns. His clothes seem to have protected him from the worst. Deer hide burns hard. Where it was born through by the fire, his exposed chest flutters pink over his rib cage.

Yevgeny reaches out a curious hand to trail his gloved fingers over the pattern. The man jumps, looks around wildly as if he can’t see. 

He’s in shock. Probably suffering from hypothermia.

Yevgeny picks him up, and slings him across his arms like a baby. No sense in killing such a hapless creature when it would just be another breech of orders.

‘You came for me,’ he mutters in Finnish. ‘I should have known to trust that you would.’

He’s a fool. Yevgeny sneers as he carries his charge back to camp.

‘Already?’ Petrovich asks, one leg through the burnt crater in the fence.

The man in Yevgeny’s arms instantly panics at the sound of Russian.

‘He didn’t get far,’ Yevgeny answers. 

The man descends into silent hysterics, breath hitching fast in his dry throat.

Home camp is in full turn, the remaining men all working feverishly now that the stress of the night has boiled down to nothing but excess hormones in need of a good sweating out. 

Medved looks up at him as he walks past once more, nose bruised from their earlier interaction. ‘Oh so now the brute is more likely to care for his enemies than his comrades,’ he snarks.

Yevgeny stops, stone cold in his tracks, feeling the poor man in his arms go from panicked to near fainting, and turns slowly to look down at Medved where he still sits on the ground. ‘Do you want me to kill him for you?’ He asks, ‘Do you want me to prove I do nothing in this moment other than follow orders?’

Medved’s face has gone pale around the dark purpling that’s starting to spread over his nose. His wide eyes search the larger man’s face, widening more every second that all he sees there is a cold and serious demeanor.

‘I,’ Medved starts, then looks scance as if trying to search for someone nearby enough that they might tell him what to do in this situation but there’s no one.

Yevgeny smiles at him as he looks mournfully back into his questioner’s eyes. This only seems to perturb him more. He frets and furrows his brows, trying to pussle it all out.

‘Your Family is named Bear and yet you quiver before me like prey, little cub,’ Yevgeny teases as he turns to continue on. ‘Don’t play with me if you don’t understand the game.’

‘Fuck you,’ Medved hisses, but it’s too pitiful a sound to be worth response. It’s only an admission of defeat.

Kreisievic is also more or less where he was last time Yevgeny saw him, standing on top of a pile of stones from one of the burned out houses. His face has smoothed out as things have gotten underway but he still has an air of trouble about him. In the way he holds his shoulders. His stance. His uniform, too, which isn’t being worn to standard, has obviously been neglected due to stress. 

‘Captain!’ Yevgeny calls.

Kreisievic spins on a heel, a half tucked shirt tail wafting lazily against his pant leg as he does it. ‘Captain?’ He asks nervously, but Yevgeny barrels on as if he hasn’t spoken at all.

‘I have brought you a present,’ he assures, lifting the poor, injured man in his arms a bit for emphasis.

Kreisievic blinks blankly for a moment as he tries to take everything in.

‘This you have,’ he says, taking off his hat to rub sweat out of his hair. A few drops cling to his fingers as he pulls them away.

‘Where do you want it?’ Yevgeny asks then, as if this is a wedding, and he’s offering a gift to the groom.

Kreisievic only seems more flustered by the question, stuttering and waving his hands about uselessly for a moment before finally forcing out a strained, ‘um, over there,’ while vaguely gesturing toward the storehouse.

Yevgeny follows the order as soon as it’s given.

‘And make sure his injuries are seen to!’ Kreisievic calls after him.

He pauses, fingers lingering on the door’s large outer lock, before continuing onward.

It’s dark inside the shaded room. It’s high windows slant light across the backs of huddled prisoners, who turn their pathetic faces to him as he enters.

Immediately Yevgeny’s Eyes skirt to Atto and his mother and as soon as he thinks the boy’s name he knows he’ll have to come up with something better to call him. He may be a vicious little pup now, but that will no longer be fitting when he tempers out into the bitch he’s meant to be.

Nervous eyes watch him as he stoops, and sets the man down in the dirt along the back wall. His panicked breathing makes the sticky burns on his stomach stretch and jump, sightless eyes looking desperately around for some indication of where he is.

‘Breathing,’ he mutters in Finish. ‘I hear breathing.’

Yevgeny ignores him as he inspects the injuries. Tacky blisters, popping as they form with the strain of shock to the canvas they paint through the rigors of intense injury. He pulls a finger along the patchy pattern they make across a pectoral, trying not to think about just how much sweat had been sticking Kreisievic’s untidy uniform to his body.

‘You,’ he says, pointing to one of the women, ‘come here and see to this. I will bring you warm water and clean cloths.’

She nods despite the clear confusion on her face, as she attempts to follow context clues to decipher his orders. Stupid of her not to learn Russian even when she knew her land was about to be invaded. At least in her defense she manages to understand the brass tacks of it, as she half walks half crawls to the man.

Yevgeny nods an assurance as he regains his feet. Let’s his eyes linger on the boy as he makes his way back to the door. The light color of his hair. The bright defiance of his eyes. It shines even in the dark despite his injury and the effeminate outline of his prone form.

Tonight is going to be difficult to spend alone in his sleeping bag, he thinks, as the door slams shut behind him and he’s left staring at Kreisievic as he nervously paces the street, a finger gripped between his teeth.

The Junior Lieutenant would be much prettier blonde. If he was blonde. He should probably dye his hair.

Yevgeny thinks to suggest it sometime as he makes his way to the water pump by one of the pastures. A cow noses at his arm, trying to get food as he pauses to pick up a bucket.

He ignores the animal, heating his hands until the handles of the bucket glow red. It spreads slowly. The same way blood oozes from a dead body. All the way down through the metal. Millimeter by millimeter. Centimeter by centimeter. Until the whole bucket is bright and hot, and the poor hungry cow is very distressed.

He lets it cool slightly before he fills it to keep it from warping. Clean bucket, hot water, accounted for. Now clean fabric. A bit of washing hung on a line nearby will have to do. He shreds the sheet into strips and lays them over an arm before gathering the bucket back up.

The woman is fretting over the man when he comes back, trying to calm him down. She looks at him nervously as he sets the bucket down by her, but he’s too busy getting another eye full of the boy.

‘Hot,’ he says in Finnish, tapping the handles of the bucket. ‘Burn.’

The woman nods her understanding, and he offers her the cloth strips before turning his attention back to the boy.

Needle like eyes stare back at him. There’s a storm behind those eyes, a hatered and a resentment at war with necessary patience.

Yevgeny sits, facing the boy, holds his gaze.

He’s too young for his face to have hardened yet. Only the faintest traces of manhood touch his jaw and temples. They’ll fade as the drugs take effect, he knows, which makes having so many layers of clothes on a bit more uncomfortable.

After about a minute of prolonged, near unblinking eye contact, the boy turns his face away.

Yevgeny feels his dick jump hard against his inseam. Has to take a steadying breath as he turns his attention back to the injured man beside him, and the woman he’d ordered to see to his care.

She moves decisively, stripping off his snow sodden clothes, and wrapping him snuggly in the bigger strips. Then she runs her hands along his arms in an attempt to sooth his shivering before turning her attention back to the thinner strips, soaking one in water.

Yevgeny watches with interest as she pulls it over the married skin of a nipple. He has to crook a knee to hide his growing errection in the folds of his pants, which also affords him a screen so that he can lay a hand over it innertly. Not stroking, or fondling, not even squeezing. Just there as a warm pressure.

Not that he really needs to be discrete here. Not that he could really get in trouble for any of this, but things things your grandmother teaches you with her walking stick are things that are hard to forget.

The cloth moves over the burns, pulling ash and plasma out of them. She sings softly as she works, which seems to soothe the injured man. And slowly, as if becoming emboldened by the staticness of his presence, a few of the others move over, shuffling so as not to overbalance in their bindings.

He pauses a moment in his voyerism to engage in a different kind of watching and prying. The kind of prying he’d done the first day they’d come here, when he’d seen Atto’s mother hold him to her side like that.

The new comers join the song, strengthening the words until they reverberate against the stone walls of the small space. They lay their hands on his arms, and rub them against the sheets to warm him. And he seems comforted. His breathing slows, and his body begins to relax once more. The shivers recede. He stopps struggling to speak. Lets them care for him.

Yevgeny watches, with the distinct feeling of watching animals behave in some secret, rarely observed way, as The man closes his eyes, and allows himself to cry. He watches as a human watches a primate. Too clinical. Too removed. Too far from understanding to find empathy for it. Only baffled by a grown man doing something so childish. So womanly. Even, or maybe especially, in a time like this when he has been made less of a man, and may soon die.

The door opens suddenly, upsetting the motes of dust hanging suspended in the shafted sunlight, and Yevgeny jerks his head to see Petrovich standing silhouetted in the doorway.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ The other officer asks.

‘Lietenant Kreisievic told me to see that his injuries were cared for,’ Yevgeny explains.

Petrovich gives him a disgusted once over. ‘So you take this time to laze about in the dirt like a dog?’ He sneers.

‘Yeah actually,’ Yevgeny tells him. ‘And I’m enjoying myself down here too.’

Petrovich scoffs And casts a glance back out the door. ‘Whatever, we need you back out on the search team, so leave them to themselves,’ he says.

‘And if they mercy kill the prisoner before we can extract any information?’ Yevgeny asks.

‘Fine, leave one of the other men to it,’ Petrovich snaps. ‘Just get out here.’

Yevgeny frowns but he listens, chuckling at the look on Petrovich’s face as he catches sight of trouser lines stretched taught around an obvious erection.

The other officer doesn’t say anything about it. Shuts his mouth, and schools his face into a stony expression as he turns away, but Yevgeny’s already thinking about forcing him into one of the woman prisoner’s clothes, and fucking him till he screams. Which doesn’t help the situation at all.

By the time he gets back outside he’s limping.

He catches sight of Kreisievic and Kurpin huddled around Orlovis as if waiting for him to tell them something. 

‘I got him,’ Petrovich tells Kreisievic as he approaches, ‘He was playing with himself in the store room.’

Kreisievic leans around the other man to give him a weird look, and Yevgeny expresses wordless indignance at the accusation despite it’s near accuracy.

‘You might want to take over his watch,’ Petrovich continues.

To which Kreisievic nods, then motions to Orlovis before saying quickly, ‘Debrief me when you get back,’ and jogging up the hill.

‘Alright,’ Orlovis says as the storehouse door swings shut once more. He’s got the top of his balaclava pulled back so it only covers his mouth, which is still clearly in the process of mulling some kind of tack of chew. 

‘I picked up their tracks on the south side of the village arcing west through the snow but they dropped off about three hundred meters past the tree line which means they’re covering their tracks, I’ll lead you out to the point where the tracks drop off. From there we’ll branch out, try to follow any disturbed snow or ice, and let’s see if we can nab these mongrels.’


	6. The Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are about to get religious so if you can’t follow along that’s because myths are fucky

Orlovis And Petrovich turn back west and southwest once they reach the spot where the tracks drop off so Yevgeny turns northwest. Fanning out like a three fingered hand over the ground. For a long while he can see Orlovis walking beside him, the distance increasing, slowly and slightly, until he’s completely lost from view.

And then it’s only the varied layer of snow on the ground, and the trees fading from burned to whole. The sun shines bright between gauzy clouds. It’s a still day. A good day to hear and be heard.

Rabbits in the bushes. Foxes hidden behind light dunes of down. Birds in trees.

He hears all of them and all of them hear him. They watch him curiously as he goes about his business. 

Four hours pass. Midday creeps into afternoon and then into evening quickly. Winter comes up cold and hungry, wrapping the earth in its gaping jaws and making him regret the sweat the sun had ground into his undershirt. 

And then the wind starts. 

He walks, and walks until his feet feel cold through the toes of his boots, and the gusseting of the air takes the night from chilled to bone frozen. The dark bites. Deep through the wool of his coat like shit. Like an angry dog summoned up by the fighting spirit of the natives here. So begrudgingly, still hungry for the game he hunts, he finally searches for a place he can bed down for the night. 

Shelter comes in the form of a rock cluster sticking out of the snow that manages to form a good shield against the wind. He warms the ground until the snow melts back away from him, and then sets up his sleeping bag. A short trip back out into the wind, shivering even more now that he’s dropped his pack and left his back bare, finds him uprooting a large bush to drag back for kindling.

If he’s on their tail, which at this point he doubts because he has yet to see much of anything looking like a track and there hasn’t been any snowfall since their arrival to cover any disturbances, they’ll see his smoke trail bright in the sky. They’ll know he’s coming.

But that’s only if they move like ghosts. With their feet never truly touching the ground. 

His grandmother had told him Loki was known for that. She’d also told him that some scholars thought Loki to be a Finnish god. The Finnish Veles.

As the fire catches, his mind turns to the boy. Savage little wolf that he is. If his hair had been as red as this flame he’d be a dead ringer for a young trickster. And not the kind of trickster one could enjoy. The kind that stole your baby as a prank and laughed in your face about it.

Cruel and unforgiving.

Just the thought of harnessing that, reshaping it to be what he wants, gets him hard again.

The images flash through his mind like bursts of lightning in the sky behind his eyelids. 

Kreisievic’s fingers wicking moisture away from his sweat damp hair. The curve of  
Atto’s waist as he pushed himself up out of the dirt. The shine of his eyes. His hair. Tearing that dress back off of Petrovich while he cried. Atto’s fucking eyes as he broke their lingering stare. The shame there, marring his perfect pride.

The wolf won’t be a wolf much longer. He’s going to shift his shape into something different. Something softer. 

Yevgeny’s toes curl in his boots as he grips himself through the heavy fabric of his uniform pants.

Just like Loki.

Shifting his shape. Turning into something else. He’ll be invoking that. He’ll be conjuring something. This is arcane and he knows it. He’s fucking with something big here. That taste in the air. It still comes at times. It gets stronger near the boy. He can feel the difference. The tension. Hanging in the aether like a web. A tapestry they’re all woven into.

The wyrd holding them all together. 

His breath hitches as he manages to unbuckle his belt. And he doesn’t even bother unbuttoning his pants before he shoves a hand in them, down under his long johns, snug up against himself. The leather of his gloves is a relatively regular feeling at this point. Slightly colder than his flesh, slightly more removed.

It’s useless pulling a cock out in weather this cold unless you want a case of blue balls, so he keeps himself right where he is, jerking it into the leg of his underpants.

There’s something about everything here. It’s thicker somehow. The feeling of something extra tugging against his skin.

This is a test. He knows it’s a test. Doesn’t know what kind of test of the victory conditions but he knows. 

Atto. Those fierce eyes. The way his lips pull back on needle sharp baby teeth. Like a puppy.

Owning him. Taking him from a wild beast into a pet. Collaring him. Leashing him. That must be the test.

Yevgeny’s about to fucking ace it, he knows. 

He catches the head of his dick between his fingertips and uses his foreskin like a fucksleve.

His gloves are warm by now. Almost hot even. 

Atto’s mouth is going to look wonderful when it opens for him. He’ll probably try to bite down. They always try to bite down.

That’s the thought that pushes him over the edge. He curls inward on his own orgasm, spasming around it for a moment, teeth ground into his lower lip, and cum seeping into thick linen and wool.

The night is immensely silent under the sound of the wind.

Loki. Veles. Beneath him, the sky. Perun. 

The Finnish name for Perun was Ukko, he’d already learned that.

Father of the sky. Father of lightning. 

One of the forebears to Farbauti and his sons. 

That blood ran through him.

Same as the blood of wolves and women, ran shifting in constant fight like Loki’s sons turned to wolves to eat each other, now in Atto’s veins. Changing. Veles to Vela to Mokosh. 

He leans back against the rock, startled the moment his right shoulder blade touches into it and pain shoots through him.

Instantly, he remembers the arrow. How could he have forgotten?

It’s head, and the very end of it’s shaft is still lodged into the thick muscle over his shoulder blade, but he can feel the tip pressing against his bone the second it’s bothered by the contact.

He hisses and swears under his breath, tugging his coat and overshirt off.

The small bit of shaft left handging from the wound is threaded through his undershirt, which makes it arduous to pull off. He just hopes the post orgasmic endorphins will make up for all of the pain killing amp that jacking off had just done out with. 

They don’t.

By the time the shirt is off, he’s bleeding, and cursing the fact that men can’t cry because there isn’t a soul around for miles to see his shame and damn would it be nice to. Tears don’t come though. Instead he’s left to dry sob, as he tries to get a grip on the broken shards of wood.

He gets splinters for his effort, and is left knowing there’s no way he can fix this alone.

The wind howls by. Turning steadily faster and faster as the to form gales around the rock.

He doesn’t know the myths of this land as well as others. The gods here, faces hidden behind unknown masks, watch him with less care.

Knowledge and fire sit together in their holy matrimony upon the bush. They burn knowingly as they watch him.

He feels sure that he will succeed but their faces, found in the negative space between the faces of men, question his personal assurance.

It’s not their business to question him.

The wood will burn away, so he burns it away. So will the dirt and grime on the arrow. That goes with it. Until it is just an arrowhead, glowing hot enough within the wound it created to cauterize it. 

Their claws can’t sink into him. He is one of them and they cannot harm their own. 

For now it will be a tender spot. A chink in his armor. His only standing weakness, until he sees it fixed.


	7. North Northwest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait lmao

Sleep comes in fits and sweats and when he wakes up he has no memory of what he dreamed. Just the cold ashes of his kindling, and the grip of his sleeping bag. 

He opens his eyes to a layer of snow having gently blanketed him in the night.

It’s hardly an inch but even that will present a challenge to their endevour. Five men on the loose with open mouths and dumb tongues when no one can know anything. Every blessing the gods bestow on them is a curse on his unit.

The snow doesn’t bother melting, and instead makes a leap to total sublimation as he climbs out of his sleeping bag. 

The rolling of the ice dunes stretches out around him, only broken up by the tree line he’s been skirting as he travels. It’s a monotonous landscape. One that’s beginning to bore him now that the lake’s shores have fully dissolved from view. 

He packs his things, keeping his eye on the semi shade of the bare forest. With the near cloudless sky and the unforgiving sun burning through his dark clothing, it seems like maybe the difficulty of traversing the underbrush would be worth it.

It also seems like his frightened prey would be attracted to its shelter.

The Finns are smart. Militia men in white, dark skis covered by bright ice as they move, covering more ground faster than a man on foot. But it would not be an advantage worth keeping when tangling with a forest like this if they even managed to recover their skis after their failed ambush.

His shoulder aches as he slides his pack into place, and when he shifts the wrong way. It’s going to be a bitch to keep the weakness hidden if he gets into a confrontation. Not that he has a choice.

Through out this whole trip it seems as though there is some unseen opposition. Keeping him from thinking in crucial moments. Forcing him to forget important information.

He asks himself again, as he loosens the laces on his boots to prepare for his feet swelling under the preassure of his movements, how someone can forget they’ve been shot. Even in the heat of the moment like that. Especially when he’d preformed an entire day of labor on that injury.

And again with the boy attacking him that night. He’d known the little pup was loose. How could he have been caught so flat footed?

These Finns are crafty. They know their tricks. Their sleight of hand. They keep getting one up on him.

He sets his eyes on the tree line again. Not for long.

The bramble of dead branches swallows him as a bitter pill. Reluctantly. Hoping for spoonfuls of icy sugar to ease it’s plight. Numb it’s tongue.

Boots compressing snow. Gnashing it with their treads. Tearing apart the polymer light bonds it had made to itself. Nature bleeds at his passing. Scars under his touch. Where the Finns move impactlessly through their environment, he cannot exist there without changing it around him. 

Not a thread in a tapestry so much as the knife stabbed through it. Bending and breaking other threads. Cutting them. Separating them.

The world beneath the branches is compartmentalized in shafted light. The underbrush clings to the wool of his pants as moves. 

It’s quiet. Birds shut themselves up at the smell of him. Or perhaps before even that. Small animals cower in their burrows.

He comes like death. Silent but the sound of heavy footfalls. Cracking branches. The damp earth shivers beneath him. Dries in anticipation of his heated touch.

He walks, treading bushes like knee high water and wading through drifts of snow, for hours. First North and then North Northwest.

The forest grows ever thicker. Bare branches encroach into each other’s space until they nearly blanket the sky. Shafts of light fall fewer and father between. The sun climbs higher in the sky above him but the world grows darker. An earth-made eclipse.

The first firs and evergreens begin to spot the woods, a touch of leaves in a nearly leafless world. He eyes them nervously, taking the time to pause and pull out his map. It’s about time he eat anyway, so a rest should do him good but he’s mostly concerned about where he is. 

The compass doesn’t work if he touches it. To read it on his own he needs binoculars. He’s learned, through trial and error, he has to set it on the ground and back up about ten feet for it to stop spinning like the wheel of an alcoholic potter who’d broken so much of his own inventory he couldn’t afford a drink.

Even stepping back as far as he usually does though, the needle on the comps stays listless, drifting between points. Completely useless.

He backs up a few more feet. No change. Backs up again and runs into a tree. 

Which naturally because Finnland is a cruel and cursed place dislodges a drift of snow from one of the branches over him.

It’s heavy. A shit ton of frozen water is bound to weigh a ton. He could be a real giant straight from the myths and still fuck himself over dropping several stone of snow on his already injured shoulder.

The ice carries him down, pinning him under the drift, binoculars lost in slushy folds. He shouts as it sends a burst of heat and pain all the way down his arm and spine. Swearing helps a bit, but only so much. His brain is swimming on it. He’s not sure which way is back to his unit. Or if he’ll even be able to get back at this rate.

Which is just his luck in this stupid country because the other two have probably already caught the assholes they were hunting in the first place and brought them back.

If he were a normal man, he thinks, tensing his hand beneath the snow, he would die here like this, and idiot. But he’s not.

The fire in him has been there his whole life. He closes his eyes and sees it. Knows its name. It is his silent twin. His brother. They’re so intimately intertwined they could have been lovers if they’d been born separately. 

He’d used to speak to it in candle light and at hearths. They’d whispered things about him being cursed. How he was born cauled and when they’d pulled that devilish little cap off him, with hair on his face and ears like a beast.

He is not a normal man.

He’s a horrible truth returned to the world.

The pain of summoning enough energy to melt the snow off his body must black him out at some point. 

When he comes to, they’re around him, tall and dark with hooded faces and twisted antlers on their shoulders, he moves to defend himself but they’re gone in an instant.

Dark is heavy on the forest, now. Even the shafts of light that had fallen through the branches are gone. 

His breath mists in front of his face, and a deathly cold has settled in on his bones. 

Good sign, he tells himself but there’s a burning behind his eyelids. The feeling of a fever. The metal in his back chafes within the burned socket it sits in, pressed ominously against the bone of his shoulder blade. 

A metaphor for his existence in this place lodged in his skin.

There are no birds. Nor animals. No sound. Not even the wind in the trees.

Breath in front of his face, he pushes himself up, sits for a moment staring at his own man made mist until it looks like a massive ghostly tongue crawling out of his mouth, and he has to look at anything else.

His binoculars are missing in the remains of the snow drift and searching there seems to do no good in turning them up so he curses his luck, and turns to the rest of his things. 

The compas is still sitting on the ground where he left it, but his pack is gone. Nowhere in sight. 

The feeling that his privacy has been violated without his conscious knowledge sets sparks off somewhere deep in his chest, but they have nowhere to go. No outlet. 

Instead of venting it, he moves, pulls himself onto his knees first and then his feet. 

The compas spins wildly as he approaches it. Cowers like an animal in a trap, gnashing it’s teeth. 

A compas is the representation of the Axis Mundi. Four directions. Four planes of existence. One singular Rod connecting them all together. This delicate needle. It was a representation that relied on its reality to function, pulled by the inegmatic pull of it’s megnatism. But in his hand it’s connection is severed. In his hand his own magnetism interrupts. 

What Rod is he?

There is no direction to choose. He’s lost his way and his map. Any means he has of finding his way back. 

He looks at the dual fir trees that had caused his pause in the first place. That had lead to all this. Sitting hapless one next to the other with some space between them. Like a door way.

A challenge. 

He steps through it.

From the heavens above where the white god and the ether mix with the clouds to deep down bellow them at the well beneath the tree of the world where Veles sleeps in his watery grave, to those in between: the true and the deceitful. He has a feeling it all knows.

All the eyes are watching at once. The thousand faces of god turned on him with all knowing eyes, and unspeaking tongues. Judging silently as he makes his next misstep.

It bothers him. It’s the same feeling he gets stepping through his own family’s front door. It itches under his skin. 

There’s a path ahead of him, clear in the restriction of the trees around it, almost straight if not slightly meandering. He puts one foot in front of the other.

The trees grow taller and taller still, trunks less and less barren with every footfall until fat lucious firs Mark his passage, shaking rich boughs at his ankles as he passes.

He hears the voice first as a whisper. It sounds like an eddy. Burbling air moving against itself and sliding past his ears. But it persists as he walks further, growing gently louder with every call.

This is lake country. He’s looked at the map of the area many times now and knows it’s dogged down with water. He’s not the type of person meant to be here, and the sound is starting to worry him, maybe he’s heading straight for some body of water that will leave him soggy and useless. 

The voice seems to be saying something. Gentle words formed by tongues of froth. He can’t make them out. They seem just beyond audibility.

And the tunnel of trees seems to come to an end ahead of him in a gaping maw of blackness. He stands between the last two firs and squints into it, trying to make anything out for a moment.

And clearly then it says in his ear, ‘and he will take arms from your arms, those arms that will smash him-‘

He summons the fire into his hand instantly, as if to banish the voice, and it trails back into inaudibility. 

The bated dark waits hungry around him. Holding the fire out lie a torch, he steps forward.

Even with the light it is too dark to see here. It seems as if this darkness swallows fire. Though it still burns in his hand it does no good in aiding his sight. 

He takes another step forward, and then another, stopping up abruptly as the toe of his boot meats with the edge of water, and the sound seems to echo endless in this soundless place.

The whispers whip themselves to frenzy around him, as he stumbles to step back a few paces.

Now that it’s been disturbed the ripples on the water reflect the light, and he can see it, stretching back and back into the darkness endlessly.

The fire shivers in his hand, shudders with the rest of him.

They come up from the depths, wide, and massive. Their points crest the surface of the water, and it rises up around them as if pulled by some mass beneath.

For a moment, dimmed by his fear, the fire goes out but he’s quick to resummon it, so that he can see the horns rising up out of the water. 

He knows this. He knows. He can tell it the moment he sees it, and he doesn’t need to stay to hear the rest. Those horns, like that of a bull. Wide and towering. Deep in the water. He needs no more said than this. The knowing strikes him as deep as the utter blackness of the pond. The whispers in his ears, must be some hint of what to come but he cannot hear them.

He can’t hear anything but the sound of the water sliding around those horns. They seem to come up forever. They seem to rise eternal, until he sees the very top of a hairy head, and flees.

The trees move past him in blurs of color as he runs back the way he’s come. He can hear them. The whispers. Thousands of women in the forest, all calling out to him. The mouth pieces of the drowned one. Their dark mouths assail him, too quiet, too many to be made sense of beyond the sound of his rushing breath and the thunder of his boots upon the ground. 

He makes it back through the two trees that had formed the doorway, and instantly stumbles over his pack, sending himself spwarling face first into another snowdrift. 

For a moment, he almost thinks he can hear them laughing, but as soon as he pulls his ears out of the ice, the forest is silent again. 

He looks back over his shoulder and sees only bare aspens. Not a single fir.


	8. Man On Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only doodle i’ve done recently is this character design for Kaz’ mom cause me and the resident cunt were talking about doing a comic where the Boss gets stationed in Japan and they do Big Lesbians

The burning starts small in the crest of the bone. Not the same burning as fire. Something else. Something wrong. It sets a slickness in his skin. A warmth past the warmth of his comfort. His sweat freezes slowly in the dampening wool of his coat. 

Water overwhelms him. Drowns him. Drags him down. But it needs no body of it’s own to hold him. It’s his own water. The salt in his own veins. A deep reminder that no matter how hot the fire burns he is still born from the ocean, rivers, and lakes of his homeland. 

Self treachery. Veles does not need to utter a word to sing a poem of ownership and lineage. 

The snow goes on forever. The forest is deep in it’s silence. The silence of many eyes watching him. Owls with human lips and human whispers. Trees with fingers that reach for him as he slogs through the rolling sea of slush his roving heat creates.

The fire starts on his back. Slow building. It burns through the thick wool of his coat, eating through the sweat stained wetness. It’s so hungry it consumes him. Slowly at first and then all at once.

The fingers of the trees pull back to avoid his burning. The owls seal their lips for fear of inhaling his smoke. 

The sky opens up around him, and thunder rolls through it. A lullaby from an absent father. Always gone and missing. Never attentive. While dark mother uses her teeth for punishment. Only fire keeps her at bay.

Dark. Dark hair. Dark water. So dark he can’t see through it. Even when there must be truths within. 

The lake walks to him and lays itself at his feet prostrate. It invites him to walk into it with the face of womb that birthed him. A revolting face. He cannot trust it. Nor the horns with which it has been adorned. 

This is the wrong harbor. The howling of wolves calls him away. Back to the land. The ice upon it, a desert of water. 

Wolves. Wolves did this. The wolves nipping at his heels. The beasts in the underbrush. They’ve pursued him this whole time. They drive their knives, their teeth, deep into his back. Fangs in his bones. They’re eating him like the fire. He is welcome here. Welcome to die.

It’s a type of wlecome he’s never been.

The trees shamble back along the desert. Their roots are massive gnarled feet. Their many arms hang useless from their heads. They mourn the corpses of their fallen family stolen and used to line comfortable human dens. 

A fence of their bones, arrayed around a burnt wolf den. The dogs that have stolen it bark at him. Crazed. They line along the fence and bare their teeth but he can’t understand the noises they make. 

He’s tired. Exhausted. He only wants to lay down in his tent and rest forever. But the closer he comes to the fence the more the dogs howl. 

The rolling sky above them is listening to the panic. Sympathetic to the fear. Their howls call down a storm. And the water around him is so heavy. Stoking the fire takes too much fuel. 

The dirt welcomes him to die there so he does.

First thing he knows is cold. It seems fitting. A thought at place. Any dead man would be cold. 

The second thing he knows it a warm hand striking him across the face. He sputters, and opens his eyes to find Petrovitch leaning over him.

‘What’s happening?’ He asks the instant the other man’s disapproving face solidifies in his vision.

‘We’ve removed the arrow head from your back, but the wound is infected,’ he says, frowning. 

Yevgeny grunts, reaching for his shoulder. ‘No. I cauterized it,’ he insists.

Petrovitch gives him a caustic little laugh. ‘That only works if the wound is able to seal back together, and there’s nothing dirty in it.’

‘But the heat cleaned the steel,’ Yevgeny insists.

‘The arrow head was iron. You’re either allergic to it or you were wrong,’ Petrovitch explains. 

Yevgeny groans then, finally finding a moment in thought for it to occur to him he doesn’t know where he is. His eyes slide from Petrovitch’s face to the ceiling above them, and then the walls. 

So not a tent then.

‘Where am I?’ He asks.

‘One of the remaining houses on the west end of town. You’re fevered and we had to stabalize your temperature,’ Petrovitch explains.

Yevgeny falls back into silence. There’s something deep in the humiliation of this. They’d almost killed him. A bunch of idiot Finns on skis. Somehow, they’d managed to pose a threat to him.

‘Did you catch them?’ He asks, and the acid of his shame seeps from his voice when he speaks.

‘Yes actually, we caught them on the neck of the lake, headed for the harbour. Likely to regroup with the Nazis in the area,’ Petrovitch details. ‘Three of them dead, two brought back alive for information.’

Yevgeny grumbles his understanding, turning onto his left side. It’s only then that he can tell, by the shift of the blankets, that Petrovitch is sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. He’s of a mind to push the man off, but can’t muster the energy. Which Petrovitch must be aware of. That must be why he’s so comfortable.

‘I’d like to see them,’ he says.

‘Who?’ Petrovitch asks.

‘The prisoners.’

There’s a beat of silence as Petrovitch seems to contemplate this. ‘Maybe in a few days once you’re well enough to walk again,’ he says.

And hearing it pisses Yevgeny off enough he does actually manage to summon the energy he hadn’t had to push him onto the floor. 

There’s an aborted sound of indignance that accompanies the thud of an ass hitting wood panels and then a moment of offended silence before Petrovitch says. ‘Fine. Then you will have no one to keep you company.’

‘Good,’ Yevgeny tells him as he storms out of the room.

Being injured is boring. He spends most of his time sleeping so that he doesn’t have to stare at the boring walls of the bedroom he’s been shoved in. 

Kreisievic comes in with his lunch at some point, and wakes him. 

‘It’s shchi,’ he says as he places a metal bowl on the bedside table. 

Yevgeny grunts.

‘Oh so you won’t eat it?’ The man asks then, picking it back up and thrusting it at him.

‘Is it made with smetana?’ Yevgeny asks.

Kreisievic shakes his head. ‘Pickle brine.’

‘Then no. I won’t eat it.’ 

‘Suit yourself,’ Kreisievic says, putting the bowl back down. 

They fall into a momentary lull, quietly lost in their own thoughts. ‘Why have you come and not one of the other Seargents?’ Yevgeny asks when the isolation of it becomes difficult.

‘I supposed I would give you a debriefing on the changes brass made to staff while you were missing. But other than that I’m here to check on you,’ Kreisievic tells him.

Yevgeny wants to make some dig about caring for people, but can’t manage anything off the cuff because he’s distracted by what the Lieutenant had said first. ‘Staff changes?’ He asks.

‘Reenforcements to be exact,’ Kreisievic says, ‘They’ve sent us three men. A Junior Lieutenant, a Senior Lieutenant, and a Junior Captain to replace the men we lost.’

Yevgeny shakes his head. ‘No,’ he corrects, ‘They’ve sent us three men to take control of a unit they consider to be acting out of place.’

‘Well if that’s what they’re considering I think they have the right idea,’ Kreisievic tells him.

Yevgeny hits the man with a hard glare. ‘Do you spit in the face of the promotion opportunity you were granted?’

Kreisievic heavs a sigh, setting the bowl of soup down again and pulling a chair up to the side of the bed. He sits like he carries the weight of the entire unit on him. Like he’s been dragging them all this way and he’s tired. 

‘Just because our captain is dead doesn’t make me a shoe in for jumping two entire ranks,’ he explains.

Yevgeny huffs at him.

‘I understand that for whatever reason you and I get along,’ Kreisievic starts.

‘You are the only other man here with religion,’ Yevgeny answers, cutting him off.

It puts the man off balance. Takes him aback. Yevgeny watches the subtle contractions in his face as he grapples with that. 

‘I didn’t consider you religious,’ he says after a moment.

Yevgeny hums an understanding. ‘It’s a private matter, is it not? But I’m not silent about it. I tell the men stories when they ask.’

‘I don’t think that’s the same thing as-‘

‘Isn’t it though? They are both old religions, and both our peoples have fallen prey to Christian tyranny,’ Yevgeny says.

Kreisievic frowns at the empty space between them. ‘I suppose that’s true. Though I never expected to hear sympathy from a Vedist. Most of your kin think my faith an invader to your lands.’

‘Then they forget how their ancestors came to be Russian,’ Yevgeny says. ‘They don’t understand the differences between our faiths. Yours is a god of people. Ours are gods of places and things. They cannot threaten each other if the realms the govern are entirely different.’

‘I’ve never looked at it like that before,’ Kreisievic says. 

‘Having read the Torah, I could not see it any other way. He claims a specific people as his own,’ Yevgeny says, pointing to Kreisievic. ‘He extends no alms to men outside of that people. He does not overeach his station just as Veles does not crawl out of the water and conquer the sky. Because it would upset the natural balance. Your god keeps you like a Shepard keeps a flock. He tends to you and leads you to richer lands. Our gods are the lands themselves. Rather than leading us away from famine and into bounty they give us bountiful yield when pleased and strike us with salted earth when offended. They are different ways of life and they have respect for each other. Not like these Christians with their crusading god. They need to be driven from our home.’

Kreisievic nods, braces his lips against his knuckles. ‘I can understand this.’

There’s a moment of contemplative silence as they recollect themselves from the wreckage of their runaway conversational train. Then Kreisievic takes a breath and starts again.

‘You and I get along,’ he begins, ‘You would rather hear your orders from my mouth than the mouth of another man, but I need you to stop acting the foolish prodigy you’ve been your whole life, and start acting like the military man you are. You may not like your orders. You may not like the man that gives them. But your orders come from the motherland herself and you. Will. Listen. Pride be damned.’

Another moment of silence creeps into the room as Yevgeny half glares half gapes at the man. Then Kreisievic picks the bowl of soup back up, and thrusts it into Yevgeny’s hands. ‘Eat. I’m taking my leave.’

Begrudgingly, Yevgeny listens. 

Petrovitch takes over bringing him meals after that. Which he allows until the third day of his rest when he’s grown so antsy he can’t stay in bed any longer. 

It’s early morning, and he has a feeling no one but the perimeter guard is awake when he shuffles his way as soundlessly as possible to the bedroom door. No one in the house. No one outside. 

The air is crisp on his skin. Refreshing after so long cooped up in that tiny bedroom. The sun is still too weak this early to have grown hot but the ground is warm beneath his boots.

There’s a man posted guard out in the front of the store house. Sleeping on his watch. Yevgeny stops and considers his next move. He’ll have to be quiet. Near silent. Something quite difficult at his size. For a moment it’s just like being a child again, sneaking past his sleeping nanny to play outside with the poor children like his father did.

His fingers graze gently along the latch on the outside of the door, eyes darting over to the sleeping figure of the man. The sun does feel hot now and there’s sweat beading on his brow from the anticipation fo the guard’s waking. 

He’s pretty sure it’s just Petrovitch but he can’t really tell as the man’s pulled his hat down over his face. 

The latch lifts with a soft creak, and the guard jumps a bit in his sleep but fails to wake so Yevgeny uses the moment to wedge himself into the storeroom inside, sure not to fully latch the door behind himself and get locked in.

The prisoners are still sleeping but he can tell there’s less of them. Fewer women. The cripples and elderly are all gone. Two of the militia men remain alive but in bad shape.

Atto and his mother are the only two who seem to have remained in a similar state of health to his last sighting of them.

She sleeps with him held to her chest. With her arms around his shoulders, hands against his back. Lovingly. Caringly. Holding her boy. 

He stops just to watch that. Once again the voyeur to an act of emotion he doesn’t understand. Trying to catalogue and dissect the meaning of the contact. Not sexual. Entirely not sexual. Not angry. Something else. Something so entirely else. Something he’s never seen. 

He wants it and he doesn’t know why. He wants the boy. He wants them. He wants this intangible thing he can see expressed in the minutia of their actions. The delicacy of their feathered breath on each other’s skin. He wants it like he’s never wanted anything before in his life.

It looks so foreign. So alien. So powerful.

Quietly he moves toward them. Quietly he squats down. Reaches out a hand, runs the tips of his bare fingers over the boy’s cheek. And even as a prisoner. Even in a place where he might die any moment. He is so comfortable in the safety of his mother’s arms that he does not wake. 

But she does.


End file.
